ISMEA REPORT: ITALIAN PRODUCTION OF QUALITY WINE CONTINUES TO GROW. AN INCREASE OF OVER 40%, PASSING FROM 10.3 TO 15 MILLION HECTOLITERS

Italian production of high quality wines continues to grow. This is the encouraging data that has emerged from the ISMEA report, “DOC and DOCG Wines”, a study that was completed with a contribution by the Ministry of Agricultural Politics (it can be downloaded at www.ismea.it). According to the study, in fact, the production of quality wines in Italy has increased by over 40% over the past decade, with an average growth rate of 4.4%. In absolute terms, production has gone from 10.3 million hectoliters to 15 million hectoliters.
Today, the national patrimony of quality wine production includes 477 registered denominations, of which 320 are DOC, 123 are IGT, and 34 are DOCG. The highest concentration continues to be in the north (with over 40% of total production): the highest number of denominations are in Piedmont (55), followed by Tuscany (46) and Veneto (37). And good news also arrives for internal consumption numbers, which have increased by about 30% over the past ten years, with an average annual growth rate of about 3%. Less dynamic, however, are exports, which have had an increase over the past ten years of just 3%, passing from 4.4 to 4.5 million hectoliters.
Profound changes have also been registered for the country’s internal wine structure: between 1996 and 2005, over 50,000 vineyards have been lost (-8%), with a resulting decrease in production of 5%. The number of winemaking companies has also drastically decreased over the past twenty years, passing from 1.6 million to 600,000. According to ISMEA, this tendency is determined by the decrease in the number of companies producing grapes for table wine, which have gone down from over 1.5 million to 470,000. On the other hand, wine companies producing DOC and DOCG wines have increased by 14%, with their overall influence growing from 6% to 20%.